Anticipation

In anticipation of FERC’s Friday technical conference on market transparency, the American Gas Association (AGA) has recommended that the federal regulatory agency take steps to improve the public confidence in the markets by establishing a system that would mandate the reporting of fixed-price trades by all market participants to publishers of price indexes.

While traders had pushed natural gas futures lower in anticipation of a large injection in the natural gas storage report for the week ended Sept. 8, most of them were not expecting to see the 108 Bcf build reported Thursday morning by the Energy Information Administration (EIA). As a result, prompt month natural gas broke below $5 for the first time in two years to close at $4.892, down 55.7 cents on the day.

Likely in anticipation of much hotter weather in most of the East this week, non-West quotes were only moderately softer in many cases Friday and even included several flat points in the Gulf Coast and Northeast and a small uptick at Iroquois Zone 2.

Behind-the-scene negotiations over federal-state sharing of offshore production revenue were ongoing last week in anticipation of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee’s scheduled Wednesday mark-up and vote on legislation, sponsored by the panel’s leaders, that seeks to make additional acreage in the natural gas-prone area known as Lease 181 available for oil and natural gas drilling.

In anticipation of its planned merger with Cinergy Corp., Duke Energy on Friday was granted limited waivers of FERC’s policies and regulations to divest itself of a number of natural gas transportation contracts associated with certain West Coast and East Coast generation power plants that will not be part of the asset base of the merged company.

Breaking its range of the last 12 sessions, February natural gas futures opened Thursday at $8 and worked itself even lower in anticipation of yet another bearish natural gas storage withdrawal report. Following almost no reaction to the 81 Bcf pull from storage, prompt-month natural gas pushed back above $8 to settle at $8.229, down 23.1 cents from Wednesday’s close.

As announced a year ago and in anticipation of the current CEO’s retirement next month, Sempra Energy’s board of directors Wednesday officially elected Donald E. Felsinger, 58, as chairman and CEO of the San Diego-based utility holding company. The board also named two other top senior officers.

After much anticipation and speculation about the results of the Energy Information Administration’s (EIA) revised storage reporting methodology, the small weekly storage injection of 37 Bcf ended up overshadowing the minor changes made to prior numbers Thursday. The net effect of the revisions was a 2 Bcf increase in working gas storage levels as of July 22.

Florida Gas Transmission ended Thursday an Overage Alert Day notice that had been in effect for the previous three days.